


Rebirth

by mibale



Category: Priest (2011)
Genre: Gen, Psychological Drama, Vampire Headcanon, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-01
Updated: 2015-09-01
Packaged: 2018-04-18 13:52:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4708346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mibale/pseuds/mibale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Both his heart and his body he offered in service to the Lord, and for all of his life he never resented this sacrifice. But bodily death and otherwordly rebirth brought to the Priest something new. In vain his heavenly heart tried to reconcile itself with this unknowable shadow now surrounding him. He was born again not by the hand of God, but by the hand of the devil.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rebirth

**Author's Note:**

> God this is my first upload to AOO. Did I do the tags and the summary right? This isn't my usual style, it has minimal dialogue and is loosely structured. I think it's good though. I've only seen the movie so I don't know if I'm blatantly destroying canon or not ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ Since the movie glossed over the huge personality change Black Hat undergoes I'm trying to offer some version of what we missed. Hope you like it!

The transformation was one of the most pleasurable experiences in his life, but it took him a while to admit this to himself. It shamed him that he found enjoyment out of what was objectively a horrible event. He choked on her blood and yet she kept pouring it in him, he coughed it up in an effort to breathe and it splattered all over his face, dripping to his eyes and down his cheeks. He suspected that he had died then—drowned in her blood. He did not remember dying nor did he have any evidence that supported the idea but at least for now it was all he could believe. To think that the thing he’d become was just as alive and natural as a human being disgusted him and he refused to accept it. And as far as he knew there was no other entity on Earth quite like him, so he figured bitterly that nobody would argue with him as to the specifics of his transformation.

The drones watched them eyelessly the whole time. They remained dead silent, not making a noise for fear of her wrath. The only sounds came from him. Horrid, bloody, infected sounds, muffled to him by the blood collecting in the curve of his ears. Even when she left the drones remained, just staring. He shrieked and sobbed and convulsed like an animal fighting for its life. He remembered the pain. He remembered the white hot burning in his skull and the moment he became blind and the feeling of his skin being torn down into pieces as the muscles beneath grew larger. But he also remembered a pronounced feeling of arousal. His cheeks had flushed as his breathing sped up, despite the seemingly endless pain contorting his body. His member rose with awful desire as each snapping bone sent burgeoning ecstasy down his veins. He had decided long ago to dedicate his body to the Lord and abstain from earthly temptation, but no man is perfect. He was no stranger to sexual happiness nor to spiritual happiness, and yet he knew that no joy he had felt compared to his transformation. The thrill of serving the Lord and helping His people—it paled in comparison to the dirty sexual confusion he felt as her blood spilt onto him. He knew the Lord had never made him feel so utterly satisfied and enamored, knew but denied. A Priest had more self-control than to buckle so quickly to the devil’s tempting.

When he had awakened from his lovely nightmare he found himself still surrounded by leering drones and took a breath—the air was saturated with an acrid scent like the rotten blood of a corpse. The drones seemed neither curious nor uninterested, and seemed to be watching him out of some biological instinct rather than with the intellectual curiosity of a man. The drones stared, piled on top of each other, each one trying to get a good view of him as they sat in a circle around him. He might have thought them eerily realistic sculptures were they not quivering minutely with life. He tore his eyes from the sight only to look down at his own body and discover the source of the putrid smell.

He felt a deafening confusion as he lost his sense of where he ended and the where the piles of flesh around him began. The tissue was still quite fresh and free of larvae, though somehow several flies had blindly found their way underground and to this incredibly unappetizing meal. The thought brought a realization to him—he was no longer blind though the sunlight had removed itself from this hellish tomb. He saw everything around him in crisp colorful detail, which enhanced beauty and embellished horror. The scent of his own dead body pressed in on his head, prompting him to vomit up whatever was in his stomach, but the prompts went unanswered. He felt despair and expected warm tears to stream down his face but nothing came. Terror gripped him as he realized his mouth was dry and he felt incredibly parched—he was dehydrated to the bone. His skin—or whatever tissue was now covering him—was broken from dryness and lacking its usual pinkness. He wanted so badly to vomit but could not.

When he stood he realized he felt no pain though he knew he had broken several, if not all, of his bones during the ordeal. He felt strong despite his terrible thirst, and his mind was sharp though he by all accounts was terribly malnourished. The drones kept staring and he briefly wanted to shout at them but stopped himself. Somehow, using his voice against things so inhuman did not seem wise at the moment. There was a strong feeling of safety in this tomb though his mind did not believe it. He glared at the drones but felt no fear and perceived no maliciousness. The idea of a mob of drones being harmless made no sense to him at all and he stayed where he was for a long while before giving in.

The first step was the hardest. He sought not to close the distance between himself and the monsters but he thought it was clear he was close to death and he had to do what he could to escape. He clenched his fists and lifted his chest to betray no vulnerability, and stepped forward.

Immediately they drew back.

He froze in his place. Of all the possible responses they would have to his advancement, retreat was not one he expected. A few more steps supported this notion as the drones continued to move away from him as if they were a liquid and he was displacing their molecules by moving through them. He continued to stumble confusedly around the caves for hours trying to find a way out. A few drones followed him for a while but soon lost interest and chose instead to stare at him until they could no longer see him.

 

He realized it took him several days to reach the surface and yet he had required no water, food, sleep, elimination, or even air, it seemed. He refused to linger on this realization for very long. Why wasn’t he tired? Why wasn’t his head spinning with exhaustion and trauma? He could still smell the blood and dead flesh on him that he had not bothered to remove as of yet. It dried up and peeled off as he wandered the desert.

He realized he had been walking without rest across the arid landscape for several days with no adverse effects to his body but silenced information. The truth could be discovered if he thought on it hard enough, so he did not think. He simply moved, and moved, and moved.

 

He saw a lizard and stopped. His legs buzzed with the sudden change in routine and he looked at the lizard for a long time. It skittered around the dusty desert floor and climbed atop a boulder to lay down and let itself be warmed by the sun. It was the first living animal he’d seen, since the flies, he supposed. He was of the teaching that proposed vampires were not living like humans, and that their supposed signs of life like independent movement and consumption were a direct result of being the devil’s puppets. They seemed alive but weren’t. The lizard was definitely alive. He didn’t think about which category he himself fell under.

Drones were a daily part of his life now. They’d kept their distance but every dusk he’d start to hear their chitters, catching sight of them traveling parallel to him a distance away. As a Priest he had never seen drones act in such a way, like ducklings blindly following their mother across the world. Their behavior was not threatening, and though he was always suspicious of trickery, he did not think drones were clever enough to conceive of deception. Recently he’d begun to feel a bit of warmth in his belly when he heard their inevitable arrival after sunset. They were not alive, no, but they were not terrible companions either.

They would be jealous of the lizard, he thought, then laughed. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d made a joke. He decided to continue in that train of thought, soon there would be an army of lizards following him across the desert during the day and vampires at night; at dusk and dawn they would fight over him. If it came to that—choosing between a lizard and a vampire—he would choose the lizard, he decided. He was not ungrateful for the unholy company the drones had provided, but the lizard _was_ alive. And he was drawn to life.

A scorpion was next, then a bird or two. Then a family of coyote a mile or two away—they ran when they sighted him but he counted five. His heart skipped a beat when he saw a rabbit bouncing out of a prickly desert bush just a stone’s throw away. He could see its fur ruffling under its flighty movements, its eyes huge and black and locked on him, the dust it kicked up after each hop and the footprints it left in its wake. He felt such a longing to touch the rabbit, to feel something living touch his flesh, something from God’s own hands instead of the devilish creations he’d been surrounded by for so long. His muscles tightened and threatened to spring into action but he resisted. The rabbit would only flee from him and he knew he wouldn’t be able to catch it. Anyway, he didn’t particularly want to hold something close that was terrified of him.

When dawn came without any sign of the drones during the night, he knew a human settlement was not far. His excitement surprised him. Finding humans had not been his goal—nothing had been his goal—but now it seemed to be his only desire. He smiled that morning at the sun as it rose. He thought if he were ever going to cry it would be now, but he didn’t cry. He felt maybe he would never cry again. But he could smile, and he did.

 

They came to him before he came to them, though they found him purely on accident. He heard the lowing of cattle some miles away and half hoped the attending cowherds might stumble across him. Of course there were no such “stumbles” in the open desert, but he made sure to cross their plane of sight a few times while still maintaining ignorance. Better to be a wretch discovered than a wretch invading.

When they began to approach him he wasn’t sure if he should continue on his path, stop to wait, or head for them. He’d been able to come to terms with the fact that he could see and hear quite a distance—farther than humans. He decided to keep walking forward a while more until he figured the cowherds would be visible by a normal person, then stopped.

“Whatchya doin’ out here?” one cowherd asked him as his horse slowed to a trot. The horse apparently halted before the cowherd intended, stumbling a bit and backing up nervously before it got very close to the desert wanderer. He frowned at the horse as its rider reprimanded it. The animal did not want to approach him and he didn’t want to dwell on the reason why.

The other cowherd, younger, dismounted his horse and let it stay back as he approached the stranger. The boy peered at him and appeared startled.

“You a Priest?”

It had been so long since he’d heard the word that he’d begun to think it was just a figment of his imagination. It felt like he’d left home for years, so long he began to forget the faces of his family, the taste of home-cooked food, the memories he had in the place. Now it all seemed very real to him. All the vague and cloudy memories he had of fighting an enemy, serving a God, being a man, they were real. He was now who he was then. The cross of the Lord had not left him.

“Yeah,” he answered, his voice breaking with dryness.

He felt a soft comfort flowing over him as he communicated with a human being for the first time in what felt like forever. Just the simple feeling of being noticed by a familiar lifted his spirits. He still existed. He still had a voice, and words. He was no longer lost.

“You look like shit. What happened to you?” asked the older cowherd, still seated on his skittish animal.

“Hell.”

“You ambushed, Priest?” the boy asked, shyly giving him a pat on the back to urge him in the direction of their ranch.

He nodded. “Vampires.” His lip noticed the feeling of enlarged canines as he spoke the word but he stubbornly ignored it. He would open his mouth rarely now. He didn’t think about the reason why.

 

He thought the smell and sight of food would excite him but he felt nothing. Not even when he put the food to his mouth, chewed it, and swallowed it. He felt guilty for throwing up almost immediately after eating the missus’ cooking. She apologized but he insisted she had nothing to do with it. He knew that the food was delicious and that a starving body should readily accept such treasure, but nothing in him wanted to eat it. He hated to be impolite to his kind rescuers but he continued to refuse any food from them no matter how persistently they offered. When the missus told him salt crackers calmed an upset stomach he gave in. He could taste the salt but it gave him no joy to eat the crackers. He vomited, though it seemed more like he was coughing up broken crackers from his gut. He tasted no stomach acid in his mouth; there was no liquid as he threw up. That’s when they all realized there was something very wrong with him.

 

No more offerings were made after that. He asked the father for a cigarette and excused himself outside. He became increasing frustrated when the tobacco failed to give him that familiar feeling of relaxation and happiness it used to provide. The smoke that came out of him when he exhaled was an unnatural grey instead of the cloudy white he had known. He would have tossed the barely-used cigarette to the ground had the father not come around the corner to speak with him. He heard the father remark on the strange taste of the cigarette after it was handed to him but bitterly shoved the information out of his consciousness. He suggested that the taste came from his previous vomiting and the father laughed. That made him feel better. He had made another joke, and it had made another human being laugh. Even if he had become something other than human—How did _that_ thought come to his head?—at least he still had a sense of humor.

 

The doctor was fetched and his initial confidence did not last for long. He made small talk, no doubt trying to calm down the worried onlookers, as his stethoscope’s diaphragm searched for sound of a heart. Seemingly finding no results over the upper right of the patient’s chest, the diaphragm moved toward the center, and even to the left. The doctor was partway through an anecdote when he abruptly stopped and stared at the diaphragm as if it had just told him some startling news.

The doctor checked all over his chest, his neck, and his wrist, a silent audience looking on. The stranger somehow knew that the doctor could try all he wanted—there was no heartbeat to be found. Why? he asked himself. He ignored the question.

The feeling in the room was very awkward as the doctor was forced to make a statement he had never made before, “You have no heartbeat.” He was met with stares but strangely enough no incredulousness. The father, his son, and the missus all probed his skin in vain for any sign of a beat, but they had to agree with the doctor’s conclusion.

His heart was not beating. And yet he sat upright, perceiving the world around him and thinking introspectively as any living person would. He talked, moved—he could not eat. Exceptions aside, he seemed alive. Like drones seemed alive.

When the doctor took out a short wooden dowel the stranger did not object. As much as he knew the answer already, part of him wanted proof, wanted it said by another. The doctor leaned closer with minor hesitation; the stranger sat perfectly still showing no resistance. The family that had taken him in huddled behind the doctor to watch the proceedings, reminding the stranger of the drone audience. They betrayed significantly more fear than the doctor, and the father had his arm stretched in front of his son just in case the boy should need protection.

The doctor slid one end of the dowel between the stranger’s lips at the side of his mouth, and lifted. His eyes grew wide and he moved away quickly, his hands beginning to tremble. Though he could not see it himself, the stranger knew what had been found. The missus cried out and her husband put an arm around her waist.

It was impossible to deny now. He looked to the ground as he struggled to think of some way to diffuse the tension in the room. The doctor was already out of the house and presumably bolting straight for the sheriff’s office, so time was short.

He rose, eliciting a collective fearful shuffling from the family as they crouched lower behind their cover but never broke eye contact. He was not unfamiliar with this kind of reaction to his presence, but before it had been the vampires cowering, not human beings.

He bit his lip with an incisor and furrowed his brow. He made eye contact with the three people and gave them a small nod.

“Thank you.”

And then the vampire was gone.

 

The thoughts came in droves now, the most prominent of course being what the hell had he become? He had qualities of both a human being and a vampire, but which one was he?

He sat in the desert for a long time just hugging his knees and resenting his inability to cry. He could only rock back and forth and offer endless prayers to God. He apologized for everything he ever did and for anything he might do in the future. He promised many things to the Lord if He would just spare this poor sinner. Why would he still bear the sign of the cross if he were not still a child of God? Part of his body now belonged to the devil, but certainly part was still the Lord’s? If his mind remained pure and focused on God, did it matter that he had the body of a demon?

Every thought he had locked away was now free to roam about his head and he sat there for a very long time trying to answer them. He prayed with a parched mouth and ripped at himself in frustration, finding that penetrating his skin was no easy task. He was living inside the enemy he’d dedicated his life to fighting. Was this a punishment?

When he began to feel hunger he fell to the ground and thanked the Lord. The rumbling in his belly felt distinctly human and he began to have hope that God had had mercy on him. He roamed his immediate surroundings looking for suitable prey, his mood much improved from this little victory. Perhaps he had done nothing to displease God, perhaps this was a challenge of his faith. God let horrible things happen to his child Job though Job was his most beloved servant, and though the wanderer’s situation was unfortunate, it was still God’s will. He would survive this and prove to God that he could remain loyal to Him even with a body owned by the devil. He was powerful in his faith and he would show this to God.

 

He took a mouthful of the rabbit without bothering to skin it. He felt his hunger satisfied and praised God. Again and again he struck at the corpse with his fangs and ripped off strips of flesh to chew diligently. He forced the chunks of meat down his throat and felt them fill his stomach. Eventually his enthusiasm slowed as he felt sudden distaste for the rabbit. Most of the meat had been picked off of it anyway, so he tossed the remains to the side.

As he looked down to his knees he faced a horrible realization. His slacks were drenched in warm blood and the liquid was beginning to pool around him and soak into the thirsty ground. He had no time to dwell on it before he was suddenly heaving up undigested meat onto the pool of blood and choking on a bone he had hastily scarfed down before. Some pained coughs were able to force the bit of bone out and he trembled at the sight before him. The rabbit meat had been drained of color and its blood vessels were almost completely empty. His body had sucked it dry and then gotten rid of what it deemed useless. He lamented his now full stomach which sat quite peacefully despite the storm in his head. His sustenance was the blood of living things. He was a vampire.

 

 

He was reluctant to let his hair grow long and messy but it was a very convenient way to mask the mark of a Priest that remained on his face. Once his hair was lengthy enough to cover the cross he found himself in significantly fewer complicated situations. The news of a rogue Priest would hit the City soon and he would have a bounty placed on his head. The less often he was sighted, the sooner the Church would forget about him.

 

The Graves invited him to church that Sunday and he went. The building was modest and bare compared to the palace-like chapels he had attended regularly in the City, but it nevertheless had that familiar feeling of _home_. Agatha told him that the three stained-glass windows on either side of the church along with the large centerpiece behind the pulpit constituted the seven Stations of the Cross, and that each had been carefully designed by local artist Cynthia Lane. He admittedly suffered a heavy guilt as he stood in the pews before the glowing image of Jesus Christ upon the cross, though he was comforted knowing that no raging spiritual force had barred him from entrance or struck him dead on the spot as he approached holy ground.

It felt to him like relaxing back into an old, comforting routine. The ancient hymns, though not brought to mind since his transformation, called forth memories of his early days when he was still in training. He fell silent, however, during _Nearer My God to Thee_ , as it conjured up a memory it seemed he had tried very hard to forget. It was the hymn sung by himself and his fellow Priests before their ill-fated entry into the caves of Sola Mira, the last hymn he sang as a man. He was relieved when the hymn was brought to a close and Father Gladstone resumed his reading.

When the Holy Communion was offered to him he did not refuse, though he had quiet misgivings. It felt childish but he worried that the Body of Christ might choke him or the Blood might burn his throat and be like poison to him. He consumed both with no problems but was decidedly uncomfortable for the rest of Mass as he tried very hard not to vomit. Once the sermon was drawn to an end he escaped outside as quickly as he could without being impolite, and regurgitated the Eucharist behind the church. He wondered reluctantly how he would manage to vomit after every Sunday Mass without becoming suspicious.

Minor issues aside, he greatly appreciated the chance to meld once again with the church-going crowd and join with them in praising the Lord. He also found himself very convenient to Mr.and Mrs. Graves, as he did not mind missing a minute or two of Mass in order to quietly distract their often restless children. Versed as he was in the proper delivery and reception of Holy Mass, his Priestly training had the side effect of teaching him many ways to settle down younger members so the more mature trainees could concentrate on their communion with God.

 He grew to respect Father Gladstone though he technically outranked the local priest, and this invisible superiority made it easier for him to lie to the Father during confession. He didn’t doubt Father Gladstone’s dedication to the Church and his strict adherence to Its policies, but he could never be too careful. He was, after all, a new breed of animal, and he was still not sure which rules applied to him and which ones concerned human beings alone. He confessed every sin he could to the Father, and the sins that remained he confessed only to the Lord.

 

His secret was exposed nearly five months after he had been welcomed into the Graves’ home, but it was through no mistake of his. His exposure was quite intent.

Birchwood was so isolated that it wasn’t surprising the only trouble-making gang of outlaws who bothered with it were amateurs. The five of them trotted into town in the early afternoon while he perused the street carts and Edward and Chelsea roughhoused with the other children. The Graves produced enough vegetables for both sale and personal consumption, and on lazy work days they would send him and the kids to buy fruits and grains on the main street. He had an eye on them before the rest of the townspeople had noticed their impending arrival, and pressed a bit harder to complete his purchases and take the children back to the house. Ms. Barrett had him trapped in her usual haggling pedantics and he was just about ready to abandon the apples Mrs. Graves needed for her pie when the outlaws passed by. The street had hushed but not completely halted its activity, and all eyes were fixed warily on the new arrivals.

He called out to Edward and Chelsea when the men and their horses approached them; they glanced at him and he beckoned them over. They had no time to react before the men were circling them and their playfriends atop their blustering steeds. The outlaws chuckled to themselves and mocked him, whining out the children’s names over and over.

He abandoned Ms. Barrett and all the produce he had picked up that day and headed straight for the circling vultures.

As he expected he only got a stone’s throw from the horses before they reared up and parted before him. He stepped in front of the cowering group of children and glared up at the men who tried to get their horses back under control. The outlaws were young and hesitant but smart enough to trust their mounts’ instincts. They glared and shouted mocking insults at him as they continued down the street and he had the feeling that he would kill them in the near future. Chelsea grabbed at his slacks and he lifted her to his hip while putting a hand on Edward’s head. The other children had dispersed back to their nervous parents while Edward and Chelsea clung to the vampire.

 

He was behind the chemist’s partway through sucking the blood out of a coyote when he heard gunshots. They had come from the tavern, still alight with activity despite the pitch black night sky. He swore to himself and left his kill for the scavengers to squabble over while he slowly approached the tavern. He made every effort to not be seen at night, which was especially important at this moment considering animal blood was sprinkled lightly over his shirt and his mouth was slathered with it.

It was the newcomers, harassing the tavern-goers and having the time of their lives. One had a gun pointed at Duke, cackling and demanding Duke play song after song on the piano. Tending the bar that night was Eli Pearson, closer to 60 than 50 and father of two. He tried to serve drinks with loaded pistols aimed at him and flinched whenever his shaking caused him to spill. They shouted at him and shot holes in the roof. Townsfolk were huddled in groups watching the proceedings and trying not to attract attention. The outaws had prevented anyone from leaving bar but they were not preventing him from entering.

He grabbed a hold of the two men blocking the doorway and shoved them inside. One fell on his face and the other tripped and collapsed on a table. Duke halted his shaky piano tune. The rest of them had their pistols trained on him as he strode across the tavern—he hadn’t found out yet if a bullet or two could kill him but he would take his chances. He was too quick for the man sitting next to Duke and his head was soon buried inside of the wall. The two clowns by the bar who had been shooting their guns in the air were now shooting at him. He managed to catch every bullet in his flesh as he approached them—it hurt but none of the townspeople were injured. Everyone stumbled for the exit when they saw how many shots he’d taken without collapsing, but he caught the two trigger-happy bastards and threw them at the wall stocked with alcohol. Broken glass was in them, on them, and all around them. He’d cost Eli a fair amount of money with that move but he preferred the old man alive and in debt to dead and in the black. Most of the tavern-goers had fled screaming from the building, along with the two outlaws originally barring the exit. He was left with one man face-deep in the wall and two others cut to shreds in a pool of alcohol.

The smell of blood was thick and sweet and he frowned as he reminded himself of his recently abandoned kill. Drinking the outlaws’ blood did not feel much different than any other animal’s and to be frank these people weren’t too far from “animal” themselves. There was a specific taste he sensed in all three of the bodies that reminded him of the usual human body scent. It was sweeter than other animals’ and had a comforting familiarity. By this point he had sampled a wide range of animal bloods and it was more appetizing than most. The whiskey that saturated the outlaws’ blood certainly added to the flavor.

He stopped before he’d taken a lethal amount of blood, or at least he tried. He was unfamiliar yet with how much blood a man needed to survive and it would be guesswork until he became more experienced with the species. _If_ he did. _If._

 

There was a shameful amount of blood on him when he exited the tavern and found the town absolutely hushed and every door shut tight and every light switched off. But illuminated by a handheld gas lamp not too far away were the Graves, huddled together and staring at him. They’d brought the children along, even the baby, who looked anxious but still tired from being awoken by the frightened townsfolk.

He straightened himself. He’d been hunched over, he realized, like he tended to be while hunting. He stood up like a man and faced the Graves with little idea of what to do next. Mr. Graves came and spoke to him while Mrs. Graves stayed behind with the children, and asked him to explain what had happened in the tavern.

It was then that he regretted tasting the human blood—he looked at the faces of the kind family that took him in and he knew how they would taste. He told Mr. Graves the whole story, inserting apologies and pleas wherever possible. Mr. Graves’ face remained solemn but patient as he listened. He emphasized to Mr. Graves that he himself didn’t know what manner of creature he was but that he at heart was a Priest and intended to continue living for the Lord despite his devilish form. Mr. Graves nodded and gripped his shoulder tightly to convey affection before escorting him back to the house with the rest of the family. Edward and Chelsea were ushered back to their room despite wanting to stay and know the fate of the most recent addition to the family.

Mr. and Mrs. Graves informed him that they would pray for counsel from the Lord; it seemed the most fair and reasonable option. He agreed strongly with this course of action and excused himself from the house to give them privacy and time alone with God. He promised to be back in the morning and everything would be discussed in the light of day.

 

 

That night he caught a cougar. It was an adult female and certainly no pushover, so he was sure his hunting skills were improving. He wrestled a bit with the feline before releasing her. She swiped at him and growled before fleeing into the night. Though he couldn’t explain how, he smelled motherhood on her. The cubs were certainly not older than six weeks judging by their mother’s scent. He admitted that he’d never planned to kill the cougar—only to catch her—since he was neither hungry nor eager to kill a cat. It felt wrong to him, hurting any sort of cat, especially after the Graves’ ruddy tabby curled up on him the other night. It seemed that felines either did not notice his strangeness, or didn’t care. He didn’t want to harm them if it could be avoided.

The cougar was well out of sight and he was already on the lookout for a new target when he heard shouting from back in the town’s direction. One glance toward the settlement and his heart dropped. Smoke rose lazily from a house just starting to glow with fire. He told himself that it might be the Graves’ home but he knew there was no uncertainty about it.

A disheartening mass of people shifted around the house, tossing plank after plank of burning wood through the air. The screams from inside had already begun to die down and he began to panic. He paused briefly to shout at the firelit crowd but they merely glared at him and joined with Father Gladstone in prayer.

“And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world! He was cast out into the earth and his angels were _cast out with him_!” the Father roared over the cacophanous sounds of death.

His face contorted in disgust as he saw the Father and the congregation molding together like a great mass of maggots on a corpse, and he could take no more. He gripped the front door of the house and tore it off with one hand, and was not bothered when he heard the pained cries of a few after he tossed the flaming hunk of wood behind him.

The thought hadn’t crossed his mind that the inside of the house would be flooded with with fire and there would be no way through the rooms that didn’t involve heaving his entire body through a wall of flame. He did not dwell on the thought and his recklessness was soon rewarded as he found that the flames parted before him not unlike the Red Sea before Moses; even his clothes did not burn. Newly encouraged he barrelled through the house calling out for the Graves though the screams had now completely silenced. He saw what looked like the charred bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Graves lying dead in the hallway, it appeared that they had been overcome by the fire on their way to the childrens’ room. He knew the baby was dead.

He didn’t need to bother with the door as it had been consumed so entirely that what was left of it had collapsed on the floor. It was difficult to see anything in the room for the brightness of the flame and the squealing of burning wood assaulted his hypersensitive ears. It took him half a second to realize that Edward was still in his bed and Chelsea was not in hers. Hope burst in him and he cried out for the girl—that clever girl, so good at hiding from him.

She made a movement so weak and small that he would have never seen it had he been merely a man. She was hiding inside their porcelain toy trunk which was completely engulfed in flame, but she was able to lift its lid a fraction of an inch—enough for him to notice. She was crying when he picked her up and he felt like crying too, but didn’t. He wrapped her in his strangely fire-resistent jacket and held her close, delighting in the miniature thumps of her heart against his chest.

He came out of the burning building with nothing to show for it but his little treasure. Father Gladstone halted his spouting of Revelation, sincerely dumbfounded at the sight. He soon resumed along with the rest of the congregation, and they moved in toward the vampire and the child.

They were ignored by him as he nervously touched Chelsea’s burnt hair and welted skin, her body so small and once so perfect, now on a deathbed which should only be occupied by peaceful old men and women with full lives and loving families. Her sobs were staggered and almost confused by how to express such undescribable pain. He rubbed his thumbs across her cheeks as he cradled her, babbling every empty phrase of comfort he could recall, promising her eventual recovery and reunion with her family  and everything he knew she would never have. She said nothing but clung to him weakly and coughed and cried. He clung to her body and was wracked with tear-less sobs as he whispered her last rites, the dull droning of Father Gladstone’s sheep just barely audible in the background.

He knew the exact moment of her death by her scent and he hated himself for it.

 

He sliced Father Gladstone from neck to belly and strung him up on the chapel’s huge decorative cross. The blood dripped out of him like the melting of an icicle and the vampire could have been near death with starvation and never touched it. He set the church on fire with the same flames used to destroy the Graves, and he stood inside as it burned. Father Gladstone struggled and pleaded and cursed him but nothing would move him. He watched with rapt attention, waiting for the exact moment Father Gladstone began his journey to Hell—now he knew what scent to expect. The stained glass had hissed and cracked and begun to melt, the religious iconography now barely recognizable. The images Mrs. Graves had been so proud of, the symbols of the Lord he so eagerly served, wasted away on all sides of him as a holy temple of God burned to the ground at his hand. To him it was nothing but a den for filthy, hateful insects—they could furnish it as lavishly as they pleased but their loving praises were nothing but bold-faced lies.

Father Gladstone hung limply and the vampire smelled death for the second time that night. He waited a while longer until the fire had spread closer to the man’s corpse and begun to devour his garments and boil his skin. He felt a surprising peace knowing that he had deprived the sheep of their shepherd, and they would never be able to spit their lies to God in this church again.

He buried Chelsea near the house—the desert was too lonely and the town graveyard represented the very force that killed her. He thought, in the end, that her body would be glad to rest near her family’s. He buried her very deeply. He knew scavengers.

 

He thought he might leave the town, but he didn’t. He stayed and watched. He watched the sheep sob and wander aimlessly, cursing him and showing no remorse for their sins. They didn’t see him because he did not wish to be seen. He watched him because they disgusted him, and the more he saw the more he was sure they deserved what he had given them. He considered once or twice killing one of them but shamefully extinguished that idea. They were, after all, only simple-minded sheep which had fallen under the power of a cruel shepherd. Perhaps they were redeemable with the right leadership. He would not judge them.


End file.
